Sunday, October 15, 2006

Thing 2 has invented a new friend. It’s a little simple homemade rabbit puppet she fell in love with at Mom’s but smuggled out of their house and now he rears his head here, on occasion. She insisted it went to bed with her the other night, and then it kind of took over. It was like she was channeling a surly, talkative, furry little character on her hand. Like that impressionist guy used to do when he painted up his fist and it said “saright” a lot. It often spoke in a kind of deep voice, and instead of calling me and Jeff “Mommy and Daddy” it called us “Stacy and Jeff.” And insisted on being called Rabbit, and that we say good night to it as well. Both Thing 1 and 2 had trouble going to sleep that night, and after I’d been up and down the stairs a couple of times, Jeff took over, and went upstairs and alternately rocked them both. I had threatened Rabbit that if he wasn’t quiet he’d have to go outside to sleep, but apparently my threats weren’t enough. When Jeff was rocking Thing 1, he reported that Rabbit piped up with quite a monologue about how he’d come to visit, and when Jeff asked him to take care of Thing 2 and help her go to sleep, Rabbit explained he had to get back to his family and sleep in his own bed. When Jeff suggested that Rabbit go now back to his own family, Rabbit was kind of stumped. But not stumped into silence, apparently. Jeff said Rabbit would go in and out of his deeper voice. It all sounded pretty hysterical to me and I’m kind of sorry I missed it.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

The girls and I went to the store after I picked them up from school yesterday. I had ordered a little bodum teapot to be sent in from another store and wanted to pick it, and some other things up from a kitchen store. The girls were pretty good but with all sorts of glass dishes, pots, cups, and all sorts of stuff around I was pretty nervous, hovering around them while trying to get my stuff done. I must be quite a nag saying “look with your eyes, not with your hands!” all the time and trying to get them to come along with me. Of course what they want to look at and what I want to look at are not the same things. Finally as I was getting ready to check out Thing 2 was really involved with some ceramic pumpkins and skeletons on display and when I said “Thing 2, be careful!” and she said loudly “But mommy! I want to look with my hands!” There were a couple of little ladies at the counter who cracked up and talked about it until they left. They kept telling me how cute she is and how they like to look with their hands too.

On the way from that store to the next one, Thing 1 started telling me about horses. How a girl horse finds a boy horse that she really loves and the two of them get married. Then they make a little baby horse that is smaller than the mommy and daddy horse. I don’t know where this fascination with marriage and babies came from. Right now they’re in the other room and Thing 1 is singing a song about getting married and growing a baby in her heart.

Sunday, October 1, 2006

I should be in bed. Why is it that I always start writing when I should be in bed?

Thing 2 has been growing like a weed – neither one of them look like toddlers any more. I have two little girls. Thing 2 has been insisting she is a big girl, especially when we use “You’re not big enough” as an excuse for her to not do things she’s clearly not big enough to do, like playing pinball machines or stuff like that. She when she means “already” she says “airy,” when she goes to bed she can call ten times to have me marching up and down those stairs to help her clean her ears, band-aid her imagined wounds, listen to stories of her bad dreams (honey, I was just here two minutes ago, you couldn’t possibly have fallen asleep and had a dream since I was here last!), go potty, etc. etc. etc.

Thing 1 is my darling big girl, she put on three puppet shows for me today and is just so funny and cute… her skinny little body bouncing around.

Their childhood is slipping away and I feel like I’m not paying enough attention. I want to remember every moment, instead of trying to get them involved in something else so I can take a nap, or get something else done.

I did some work for my old company, Allen Communications, for the past couple of months. It was pretty hard trying to get anything done during what little time I had. Luckily I only needed to put in a couple hours a week at first, and then when the project got tight, my folks were in town babysitting Scott and Karma’s girls while they were in China. So a couple of days it worked for me to pick Thing 1 and Thing 2 up from school, drive them up to my brother’s house, then come back into town to work. I was able to fly to St. Louis overnight for a one day session with Boeing, the client, which I wouldn’t have been able to do either. Also helpful was the fact that Jeff has been in town since August 1st instead of traveling, while he’s been working on his book.

Right now, however, he is in San Francisco at a Microsoft conference. And I should have been in bed an hour and a half ago.